Astral Codex Ten

Priam

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Priam

Article

Priam is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between November 17, 2023 and August 08, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “the oracle told Priam that Paris would bring doom to Troy”; “aged father Priam”. It most often appears alongside Christianity, Europe, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: November 17, 2023
  • Last seen: August 08, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: I See Satan Fall Like Lightning
November 17, 2023 · Original source
He also counts “the oracle said something bad would happen if we left a guy alive, so we (tried to) kill them”. For example, the oracle told Priam that Paris would bring doom to Troy, so Priam originally left him exposed to die (he didn’t).
For Girard, the important thing about all these myths is that the victimization is good and correct. The oracle was right that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother. This really was causing the plague. Expelling Oedipus really did solve the plague. Tiamat was the Dragon of Chaos; killing her and creating the world was probably a good move. Paris really did bring doom to Troy; Priam was right to try to kill him, and the only possible regret was that he didn’t finish the job.
Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche
August 08, 2024 · Original source
At nearly 3,000 years old, the Iliad is very much in vogue, with two recent notable translations by women (Emily Wilson and Caroline Alexander) and a book of criticism aimed at a broad audience, Robin Lane Fox's Homer and His Iliad. I think part of the reason the Iliad still hits home is that its central figure, Achilles, fascinates. He's not just stronger and faster and better-looking than everyone else, he's more thoughtful and eloquent too. People point to his appearance in the underworld in the Odyssey, where he says he'd rather be a hired hand on a farm and alive than rule over all the dead. But his rejection of the heroic ethos is found in the Iliad too. His superhuman strength and beauty can’t save him from being dishonored by Agamemnon. It can’t keep his beloved Patroclus alive. All it’s good for, ultimately, is slaughtering Trojans. Which Achilles does magnificently, when he finally returns to battle; but in a sort of frenzy of despair. To a Trojan begging for mercy, he says: Patroclus is dead; I’ll be dead soon; you die too. He calls himself a useless burden on the earth. At the end when he forgoes violence and returns Hector’s body to his aged father Priam, saying sadly as he does so that he is doing nothing to help his own aged father; instead he sits in Troy, afflicting Priam and his children. And he agrees to hold the Greek army back for two weeks so that the Trojans can give Hector a proper burial.
It is impossible for me to imagine Achilles fighting the Trojans again after his interview with Priam, though the story of the Trojan war requires it; for that reason, I think, Homer ends the Iliad with Hector’s burial, with the truce still in effect.